Obtaining the latest setup binaries for the OneDrive Next Generation Sync Client

Microsoft is working on creating a unified OneDrive Windows sync client for both consume OneDrive and OneDrive for Business. This is very good news and you can read all about it here.

But the download links on the Office support pages are not for the latest version of the Next Generation Sync client (ODNGSC). At the time of this writing the latest version is 17.3.6349.0306, but the download link is for 17.3.6302.0225. So why does this matter? The ODNGSC updates itself as part of an Office 2016 update cycle or individually. When you deploy the client you might have some issues that are blocking you, stopping you from completing setup. If that is the case the client cannot update itself, because initial setup has not been completed. So you can’t get the version that might fix your setup problem. Catch 22.

Right now, one such problem is trying to use ODNGSC in Azure RemoteApp (ARA) images. In ARA users’ profiles are redirected to profile disks (VHDs) stored in Azure storage accounts. The redirection happens by using a reparse point linking the VHD to the user’s %USERPROFILE% path. The ODNGSC will not accept a path that includes a reparse point so you cannot install the client. If this error was fixed in a more recent release than the one currently installed or available for download, you would face the above problem. (So right now, this trick does not help you, but it serves to explain why I wanted to get to the latest client binaries.)

To work around this and perform initial setup with the latest ODNGSC, do this: